Generation Stalin is the first comprehensive exploration of the instrumental role of French writers in the creation and propagation of Joseph Stalin's cult of personality. Focusing on the four most prominent writers affiliated with the French Communist Party (PCF)--Henri Barbusse, Romaine Rolland, Paul Eluard, and Louis Aragon--Andrew Sobanet traces the rise and evolution of the Stalin cult in France from the late 1920s through the 1950s. Barbusse was the author of the first official biography of Stalin, and the work served as a prototype for the dictator's official biographies into the early Cold War period. The PCF was one of the most important communist parties, and these writers helped in significant ways to shape Stalinist propaganda in the international communist sphere, including within the USSR. Fundamental to Generation Stalin is an investigation of complicity with authoritarianism on the part of PCF-affiliated writers, who were often cast as intellectual and moral guides. Sobanet provides analysis of how these writers used a variety of genres--biography, novel, drama, film, poetry, essays, reportage--to support dictatorial leadership. Focusing on French nationalism and the French "culture of commemoration" used to reinforce party doctrine, Generation Stalin analyzes what it was to be a French Stalinist.